


Translations

by Ladybug_21



Category: Okja (2017)
Genre: Agriculture, COVID-19, Emoji Convos, Gen, animal rights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:48:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25268617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladybug_21/pseuds/Ladybug_21
Summary: Mija stops needing K to interpret for her.
Relationships: Jay/K (Okja), Mija (Okja) & K (Okja), Mija (Okja) & Okja (Okja)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	Translations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ghostly_Business](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghostly_Business/gifts).



> I was just listening to a very upsetting talk about the impact of COVID on the agriculture sector, and of _course_ that meant that I was going to write something like this immediately after. I own no rights to _Okja_.

Most days, Mija acted like she had never been to the United States. Neither she nor Okja wanted to remember most of that adventure. Some evenings, though, Mija could sense that her friend was thinking about everything that they had suffered at the hands of corporate America, and she cuddled into Okja's side and wrapped her arms around her friend's neck, listening to the sound of the super pig's breathing as the piglet squirmed in its sleep.

For her sixteenth birthday, Mija's grandpa bought her a smartphone, insisting that she needed to stop playing with her pigs and start acting like a normal teenager. Mija ignored him. Internet and cell reception both were extraordinarily unreliable across the mountains, and that was all the excuse that Mija needed to instead spend her afternoons ambling about the forest with her super pigs, reading her books for school while gently rising and falling on a snoozing Okja's stomach. She almost forgot that she even owned a phone, until one day, she received a text from someone other than her grandpa (who only texted when he was wondering where on the mountain Mija was).

_Mija?_

The fact that the text was sent in Roman letters made Mija narrow her eyes in suspicion.

 _Who are you?_ she typed back, using some of the very little English she could remember.

The next text that she received was a selfie of two men in balaclavas. Mija couldn't see their faces—she assumed that they were concerned about cybersecurity—but K's eyes glittered as wickedly as ever, his arm thrown around Jay's shoulders.

Mija grinned and sent a photo of Okja and the piglet in response.

👍 ❤️ 🐷 , replied A.L.F.

They didn't communicate much, but Mija was always cheered to receive little messages from her activist friends, mostly from K, who texted in Korean for Mija's benefit. The following school year, she asked to be put into an introductory English class, to the surprise of all of her classmates, who thought that Mija was only interested in science that would teach her how to be a better farmer. She downloaded Duolingo on her new phone and took to practicing her English as she and the pigs meandered through the woods, headphones on, a determined look in her eyes as she tromped over the leaves and twigs, reciting the unfamiliar words back to the app.

 _Only English now_ , she informed K one day. _I want Jay to understand, too._

감사합니다 😊 _\- Jay_ , was the next text she received.

Mija was well on her way to becoming the star English student at her school when COVID hit. The internet around the house was stable enough for Mija to be able to keep up easily with her schoolwork, and she reveled in not having to commute all the way down the mountain for classes. Her grandpa shook his head, mildly despairing over the fact that this meant even less peer-to-peer interaction for Mija, whose selfies invariably had at least one super pig in the background and were never sent to any of the boys in her class.

A.L.F. had been quiet for some time, and Mija was trying not to worry about them. She figured that they were plotting something and lying low accordingly, but there were days when she fretted that someone had gotten sick, or that Silver's fasting had taken a more serious toll, or that all six activists had been arrested and thrown into a virus-ridden prison somewhere. (She hadn't met the latest addition to A.L.F., but from what K had implied, he also spoke Korean.)

Mija began skimming the English-language news in the mornings for extra practice. Everything that the press saw fit to print these days was all coronavirus, all the time, unsurprisingly. Mija learned new vocabulary like "social distancing" and "zoonotic disease" and "fake news media" and stored it all away for future contemplation. And she saw the sickening articles about the food industry—about how hundreds of thousands of pigs would have to be euthanized, because market demand had dropped too low, and it was more cost-efficient to kill them sooner rather than later. (Mija threw her phone angrily on her bed, dragged herself over to Okja, and sobbed into the super pig's soft neck over the cruel stupidity of capitalism.)

But then, one day, a small article caught Mija's eye, about how a massive slaughterhouse in the American Midwest had been sabotaged, its doors forced open when they had been sealed to leave the pigs inside to suffocate. The corner of Mija's mouth twitched upwards. She copied the link, pasted it into a text, and hit send. For good measure, she added a "?" in a subsequent text.

K's response arrived almost immediately:

🤷🏻 😉 ⛏️ 😱 🐖 

Mija laughed.

 _Thank you_ , she texted her friends. _Keep fighting!_ _I miss you._

 _We miss you, too, Mija!_ replied A.L.F. _You keep fighting, too. By the way, what's your mailing address?_

Mija texted the address in Hangul, because she trusted K to translate it as much as necessary.

Three weeks later, a package arrived for Mija. Inside was a black balaclava with a pig emoji embroidered on the forehead in grey. _Stay safe, wear a mask!_ said the note inside. Mija happily pulled it on and ran out to the barn to model the look for Okja and the piglet, who watched her with bemusement. She pulled the balaclava off and stuffed it into Okja's mouth when she heard her grandpa's voice just outside the house. All that he saw when he passed by was Mija seated on the barn floor with her back against Okja's side, scrolling through her phone. What he didn't know was that Mija was carefully looking up the addresses of all of the nearby slaughterhouses, quietly preparing to translate her friends' encouragement into action.


End file.
